Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for managing customer service agent workflows in a contact center and more particularly to dynamically selecting a customer agent workflow based on contact center load.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems or other contact center systems provide support for customers of a product or service by allowing those users to make requests for service that can include a question posed by the user related to the product or service. Generally speaking, these systems receive requests for service, e.g., in the form of a phone call, web page form, instant message, email, etc., and route the requests to a human agent for addressing the request and providing an answer to the question. In ideal cases, the agent is selected based on the topic of the question or request and a predefined profile of that agent that includes indications of the agent's skills and/or expertise.
Contact centers strive to meet service level targets set forth by the business. One of the most commonly used metrics is Service Level, usually measured in terms of percent of interactions answered within X seconds. Traditionally, contact centers try to manage their service levels by trying to accurately forecast the expected traffic and by staffing accordingly. In addition, contact centers deploy routing systems that provide overflow coverage between teams of agents when traffic spikes cause queues to overflow. However, service spikes are not always predictable, and overflow handling often leads to customers being handled by un-trained/under-trained agents and impact customer satisfaction. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and systems for managing customer service agent workflows.